Checkup: Health news in brief

Published 2:58 pm, Friday, February 15, 2013

More Information

Page 1 of 1

Fitness may prevent dementia

Being physically fit in midlife is associated with a lower risk of dementia in old age, a new study reports.

Between 1971 and 2009, 19,458 healthy adults younger than age 65 took a treadmill fitness test as part of a broader health examination. Researchers followed the subjects through their Medicare records for an average of 24 years.

After adjusting for age, smoking, diabetes, cholesterol and other health factors, the researchers found that compared with those in the lowest 20 percent for fitness in midlife, those in the highest 20 percent had a 36 percent reduced risk of dementia.

The reason for the association is unclear, but it was independent of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular risk factors for dementia, suggesting that both vascular and nonvascular mechanisms may be involved. The findings were published last week in The Annals of Internal Medicine.

The intense flu season this year is enough to make anyone want to keep a distance from the coughs and sneezes of others. But an arm's length may not be enough.

The conventional wisdom is that flu is spread largely through close contact with others and by touching contaminated surfaces. A recent study by scientists at the Wake Forest School of Medicine, however, shows that people infected with the flu can send virus particles shooting into the air six feet away, farther than previously thought.

The researchers looked at 94 people admitted to the hospital with flu-like illness and assessed the patients' symptoms, including coughing and sneezing.

Of the 61 patients who tested positive for flu, 26 released virus particles into the air. One out of five was considered highly infectious, releasing up to 32 times more virus particles on average than the others. These were also the patients with the highest viral loads and the worst symptoms.

A person within a range of 6 feet, the team found, "could be exposed to infectious doses of influenza virus."

-— New York Times

Folic acid and autism spectrum disorders

Mothers who took folic acid supplements around the time they became pregnant were less likely to have children with an autism spectrum disorder, a new study has found.

Researchers in Norway examined health records of more than 85,000 children born there between 1999 and 2009. They also looked at questionnaires completed by their mothers to see how much folic acid they were consuming in the month before they became pregnant and during the first eight weeks of pregnancy, a critical period of embryonic brain development.

Among the 85,176 children in the study, 270 (or 0.32 percent) received an ASD diagnosis — 114 (0.13 percent) had autistic disorder, 56 (0.07 percent) had Asperger syndrome and 100 (0.12 percent) were diagnosed with "pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified," or PDD-NOS.

These children were more likely to be born to women who did not take folic acid. In the raw analysis, mothers who skipped the supplement were more than 2.1 times more likely to have a child with autistic disorder compared with mothers who took the supplement.